LITMIR.BIZ

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have a problem,” Landry announced.

      Zane closed his eyes briefly, recovered enough to open them again and retort, “‘We’? It just so happens things are going pretty well at the moment, out here.”

      “Congratulations,” Landry all but growled. “But we still have a problem, and his name is Nash.”

      Nash. Their twelve-year-old half brother, the one neither of them really knew. Nash was the product of one of their feckless father’s many romantic liaisons—the boy’s mother, if Zane recalled correctly, was a former flight attendant named Barbara, who had a penchant for belly dancing, an overactive libido and a running start on a serious drinking problem. A creative baby-namer—“Zane,” for instance, and “Landry”—Jess Sutton had never been much for hands-on parenting. He liked to make kids, give them names and then move on, leaving their moms to raise them however they saw fit.

      “I’m listening,” Zane said, after suppressing a sigh that seemed deeper than the well outside, the one rumbling up sluggish but clean supplies of water, now that the electricity was turned on and the pump actually worked.

      “Dad just dropped him off here,” Landry said, in an exaggerated whisper that led Zane to believe the boy was within earshot and, therefore, might overhear. “I can’t take care of a kid, Zane. I’ve got a business meeting in Berlin tomorrow—get that? tomorrow—and Susan and I are on the outs. In fact, she’s leaving.” A pause. “Not that she’d be willing to help out, anyhow.”

      Landry’s love life was only slightly less of a train wreck than Zane’s own had been, an uncomfortable indication that they’d inherited more from their old daddy than good teeth, fast reflexes and a passion for risk-taking. “Again?” he asked, letting a note of sarcasm slip into his voice. Susan and Landry had been married—and divorced—twice, at last count. Their marriage reminded Zane of a dizzying carnival ride; somebody was always getting on, or off.

      Landry drew in a breath and let it out in a huff. Even though he was the younger of the two, he regarded himself as the responsible, reliable brother, considered Zane a loose cannon with more luck than sense. “I didn’t call so we could discuss my personal life,” Landry bit out. “The kid—Nash—needs somewhere to stay. Pronto. I was about to put him on the next flight to L.A. when it occurred to me that you might be on location someplace, pulling down ludicrous amounts of money for doing nothing special. Where are you?”

      “I’m not in L.A.,” Zane said evenly. “I’m on the ranch in Montana—you know, the one we bought together a few years back, pretty much just for the hell of it?”

      “What the devil are you doing there?” Landry demanded. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was pushing the envelope, given that he obviously planned on asking a favor.

      A greenhorn through and through, Landry wore custom-made three-piece suits, lived in a massive penthouse condo in Chicago, employed a chauffeur and even a butler, which was just plain embarrassing, if you asked Zane, which, of course, nobody had. A complete stranger to horses and every other aspect of country life, Landry ponied up the money to pay for his half of the ranch as some kind of tax maneuver.

      “I got tired of, well, just about everything,” Zane admitted, suddenly weary. The inflatable bed hadn’t held out much appeal earlier, especially since it was womanless, but by then, he’d started to think he could sleep for days, if not decades. “So I left.”

      “Whatever.” Landry sighed. Dealing with Zane was an ordeal for him, what with his blatant superiority and all. “You have to take Nash,” he said. “Dad dumped him on me—evidently our dear father has to lay low for a few months until his poker buddies calm down enough to change their minds about having his knees broken. It’s you or foster care, and I think the poor kid’s had his fill of that already.”

      “What about Barbara?” Zane asked moderately. “You remember her? Nash’s mother?”

      “She’s out of the picture,” Landry said. His tone was flat, matter-of-fact.

      Their own mother, an early casualty of Jess Sutton’s incomprehensible charm, had died a few years before of a lingering illness. Disagreements about how to care for Maddie Rose at the end remained a major sore spot between the two brothers.

      “How so? Is Barbara sick? Dead?”

      “She’s somewhere in India or Pakistan—one of those third-world countries—on some kind of spiritual quest,” Landry replied with disdain. “That’s Dad’s story, anyway. Suffice it to say, Barbara isn’t exactly a contender for Mother of the Year.”

      “And this is my problem because...?” Zane asked, stalling. He couldn’t turn his back on his own flesh and blood and Landry knew that, damn him. Still, it was an imposition, a responsibility he wasn’t prepared to take on at this juncture, when his whole life was in transition.

      “Because Nash is your brother,” Landry said, with extreme patience.

      “He’s also yours,” Zane pointed out. He was already wondering what a person said to a twelve-year-old kid who’d probably been shuffled between the homes of strangers, their dad’s distant relations, the girlfriend du jour and then back through the whole cycle again. Repeatedly.

      “If I don’t make this meeting in Berlin,” Landry replied, “I could lose one of my most important accounts.”

      “Sucks to be you,” Zane responded mildly. “Who’s been raising this child all this time, anyway?”

      “My understanding,” Landry supplied stiffly, “is that he’s been knocking around the country with Dad. Recently, that is.” His voice softened a little. “He’s not a bad kid, Zane. And he didn’t have the kind of mom who would go to bat for him, like ours did for us.”

      In that moment, Zane could see his late mother—an inveterate optimist, their Maddie Rose—in such vivid detail that she might as well have been standing right there in his kitchen. She’d waited tables for a living, and the three of them had lived out of her beat-up old station wagon more than once, when she was between waitressing gigs, but life had been good with her, despite all the Salvation Army Christmases and secondhand school clothes and food-bank vittles. She’d had a way of “reframing” a situation—her word—so that moving on, when a job ended or a romance went sour, always seemed like an exciting adventure instead of the grinding hardship it usually was. Even when it involved considerable sacrifice on her part, Maddie Rose always made sure they stayed put when school was in session, come hell or high water, and she’d checked their homework and encouraged them to read library books and made them say grace, too.

      As always, he wished Maddie Rose had lived to see her elder son become something more than a rodeo bum, wished he could have set her up in a good house and made sure she never lacked for anything again, but, too often, life didn’t work that way.

      She’d died in a hospital somewhere in rural South Dakota, a charity case, suffering from an advanced case of leukemia, before Zane could so much as cash his first Hollywood paycheck, let alone provide for her the way he would have done, given the chance.

      Although he and Landry usually avoided the whole topic of Maddie Rose’s death, it lay raw between them, all right, like a wound deep enough to rub the skin away, and, even now, it hurt.

      “Send Nash to Missoula,” Zane heard himself say. “Let me know when he’s getting in, and I’ll be there to pick him up.”

      “Good.” Landry almost murmured the word. “Good.”

      It wasn’t a thank-you, but it would have to do.

      Zane didn’t ring off with a goodbye. He simply hit the end call button and sent his phone skittering across the tabletop, causing Slim to perk up his mismatched ears and straighten his knobby spine.

      Zane grinned, then ruffled the hide on the dog’s back to reassure him. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, boy,” he told Slim. Then, with a philosophical sigh, he added, “And that makes one of us.”

      *

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